Of the two leaves below can you tell which one is the Maple leaf? Only one of them is a maple .... can you guess what tree species the other leaf is from?

These two leaves where taken from two trees in a city park in Spokane Washington that stand side by side. The leaf on the left is a Norway Maple (Acer platanoides) leaf (I put the winged seed in the picture as a hint). The leaf on the right is from a London Plane. As you can see the leaves of these two trees are very similar and quite easy to confuse. Let me give two easy ways to tell these trees apart.

1. You can tell them apart by the structure that holds their seeds. In the case of the Norway Maple the seeds are held in a winged "samara" (seen in the image above by the left leaf). In the case of the London Plane the seeds are located in a ping-pong sized ball (see image below).

2. You can tell them apart by their bark which is very different from each other. The first image below is of the Norway maple bark.

The next image is of the Londan Plane bark on a mature tree that shows the characteristic lumpiness and bulging. The bark peels off in small sheets, which is one of the reasons it does so well in high pollution cities.

6 comments:

Hense the species names of some Acer. A.platanoides = plane-like A.pseudoplatanus = false-planePlatanus itself probably derives from a Greek word meaning broad. Note also that the lower lobes of the Plane leaf do not have main rib-veins diverging from the petiole while the Maple leaf does (i.e. three main ribs in Platanus and five in Acer).

Have you photos of Antarctic Beech, Nothofagus moorei, here? Also Coachwood, ceratopetalum apetalum? Are they under a heading in the index? So many photos I see are not specific enough to identify species. Yours are so good! Btw: The word verification is yurliumb!!

About this blog

Exploring the World´s Tree Species is a blog focused on the tree species of the world and their importance to our everyday lives. It is estimated that there are about 10,000 unique tree species in the world. Most of us however can only name a handful of trees, which is understandable given that in any given area there are normally only a few dozen tree species prevalent. In this blog however my aim is to reveal interesting facts and images of tree species from all over the world. Given that I live in Spain and only travel occasionally to the United States and a few other countries the bulk of the trees blogged about will be from these places. I hope that by browsing through this blog you will come to enjoy the trees as much as I do.